
Last Wars – Reaction
YouTube videos showing communist and brutalist architecture are trendy, and books discussing the subject are being printed and sold by truckloads. But you don’t need to put yourself in the trouble of visiting Eastern Europe to encounter these things if you really feel a gnawing pain in your stomach to know more. You don’t need to buy expensive plane tickets or risk finding out that Eastern Europe is more than a backwater indebted to the U.S.S.R.
I’m pretty sure that you can find similarly brutal, harsh and uninspired buildings in your own Western city. Sure, the concrete may be replaced by glass for practical purposes and be out of debt to the German school of architecture, which has had a far-reaching impact. But you won’t have to look far for soulless architecture. And you won’t need a college degree to create your own version of the Soviet Wave. In fact, Soviet synth bands were rarer than Chrysler being driven to the Moscow streets.
Last Wars’ “Reaction” is a good old slab of modern post-punk dread. It’s music made to sound old. It’s a musical accompaniment to a time that seems to have existed but likely never did. And it’s the kind of tune that fits in well with our modern, cloned urban landscapes. Everything is colourless and unflashy, and it’s prophesied that it will one day be doomed. Last Wars understands modern post-punk. It’s about dancing to a click track to the Apocalypse.
Avalanche Party – Nureyev Said It Best
There’s a thing about young men who daydream, are intelligent, and hate the world around them and those in it. If they don’t learn how to dance, they’ll may end up as monsters. That, in essence, is the biography of every terrorist that has ever lived. From religious fundamentalists to dictators and poor Serbian boys who gun down the future ruler of an empire, these characters are, really, the same stock character.
Post-punk has made a great comeback in recent years. It’s been impossible to ignore these bands if you’re remotely interested in rock music or in going out to watch festivals. These bands are usually made up of young men, mostly English or German, who are intelligent and distrust the world around them. But, thankfully, they’ve found out that they like to dance.
Avalanche Party’s “Nureyev Said It Best” does a good job of distilling just what this dance-post-punk business is all about. Musically, it’s all disco bass riffs and shouting about the London weather. But there’s more to it than that. The lyrics are clever, and it is an earnest attempt to get people dancing. As for Avalanche Party, there’s almost something hopeful about it all, something you don’t often get from England unless there’s a penalty shootout coming up. As for Nureyev, that man sure had great posture.